Wednesday, October 15, 2014

BOOK FEATURE w/ EXCERPT: Night Terror by Jeff Gunhus

Ten years after her abduction and near-sacrifice to the Source, Sarah Tremont struggles to be a normal teenager. As much as she’s tried to suppress the power inside of her, it’s grown dangerously strong and has drawn the attention of those who want to possess her power for themselves.

The nightmare that she thought was long over starts again as powerful forces descend upon Prescott City to seek her out. With her parents and Joseph Lonetree’s help, Sarah must stand up to an evil much more powerful than the one she faced in the caves a decade earlier. But in the end, she discovers the greatest danger might come from the power living inside of her.

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The woman didn’t look evil, but there was no better word to describe her.
Charlie Winters would wonder later how he could have missed sensing her earlier
than he did. It was equivalent to normal people walking halfway through a field
only to look down and find themselves thigh-deep in a pile of rotting animal
carcasses, the stench hitting them like a wave. After retching their stomach
contents, they would question both their senses and their sanity. How could
they have missed such a smell? How could they have not felt their feet sinking
into the liquefied soft tissue?

Charlie’s senses were better than a normal
person’s. Way better.

It had started when he was only a baby, a fact he
knew because he still remembered every second of this life since the moment of
his birth. It was a long time before he
understood that such a memory was not a normal thing. Other people, normal
humans, could not remember the first feeding at their mother’s breast. The hot
pain of circumcision. The first glimpse of sunlight as they left the hospital.
So many firsts, memories as clear to Charlie as what he’d had for breakfast
that day.

Inside those memories, the echoes and shadows of
his other unusual senses lingered. The ability to sense emotion. To pick up on
intention. Sometimes these abilities strengthened what he observed in the
physical world. His grandparents’ cooing excitement over him matched an
internal warmth that felt the same as sunshine. His father’s thoughtful stares
mirrored Charlie’s sense that his dad would do anything to protect him, to
provide for him. Even if there was an undercurrent of trepidation that vibrated
like a single out-of-tune string on a guitar, the other intentions drowned it
out and gave Charlie a sense of comfort. This was very different from his
mother, whose kind smiles and soft features once masked a nearly constant
desire to kill him.

Her thoughts alternated between putting a pillow
over his head or dropping him down the basement stairs. In darker moments, when
his father was gone overnight for a business trip, she would consider carving
up her child with a knife. Even going as far as pulling a cleaver from the
block and slowly running her sweaty palm down the length of the blade. She
never did this in front of him, but that was part of his gift. He could see
through her eyes. Feel her emotions. Know her dark intentions. And understand
that the threat of violence was very, very real.

But as much as she fantasized about it, his
mother didn’t kill him. In fact, she never so much as laid a finger on him in
anger. Slowly, over time, the dark thoughts faded, and the light inside his
mother came to match her soft eyes and the beautiful mouth that sang to him and
called him sunshine. A normal person might never have been able to forget the
darkness and might never have trusted the woman who once considered taking a ball-peen
hammer to his forehead, but he wasn’t normal people. He was special. And it was
that specialness that showed him the truth in her absolute love for him once
the veils of shadows had fallen away from her like someone passing through
heavy curtains.

Much later, Charlie read about a condition called
post-partum depression and understood where the dark had come from. It hadn’t
been his fault. Or hers. It was the depression that spawned the evil thoughts.
And he liked to think it was her love for him that pushed them back enough to
keep him safe.

Even after she recovered, he could sense when she
felt pangs of guilt about those days. They were like electric bolts jolting
through her. When those moments happened, and they could happen at any time, he
would come up and hug her, kiss her on the cheek and tell her how much he loved
her. At first, she cried harder when he did it, and he sensed her guilt grow
even stronger. Later, she puzzled over how he timed the affection to her
thoughts. Over time, the puzzling turned to suspicion, even fear that somehow
he knew. After that, like with all of his special gifts, he learned it was best
to hide.

But he hadn’t hidden his powers well enough.

If he had, then the woman who called herself Mama
D would never have come looking for him.

Jeff Gunhus is the author of both adult thrillers and the Middle Grade/YA series, The Templar Chronicles. The first book,Jack Templar Monster Hunter, was written in an effort to get his reluctant reader eleven-year old son excited about reading. It worked and a new series was born. His bookReaching Your Reluctant Readerhas helped hundreds of parents create avid readers. As a father of five, he and his wife lead an active lifestyle simply trying to keep up with their kids. In rare moments of quiet, he can be found in the back of the City Dock Cafe in Annapolis working on his next novel.